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> With minimal guidance[, LLM-based systems] put out pretty sensible tests. Yes and no. They get out all the initial annoying boilerplate of writing tests out
by filoleg 2y ago
> With minimal guidance[, LLM-based systems] put out pretty sensible tests.
Yes and no. They get out all the initial annoying boilerplate of writing tests out of the way, and the tests end up being mostly decent on the surface, but I have to manually tweak the behavior and write most of the important parts myself, especially for non-trivial tricky scenarios.
However, I am not saying this as a point against LLMs. The fact that they are able to get a good chunk of the boring boilerplate parts of writing unit tests out of the way and let me focus on the actual logic of individual tests has been noticeably helpful to me, personally.
I only use LLMs for the very first initial phase of writing unit tests, with most of the work still being done by me. But that initial phase is the most annoying and boring part of the process for me. So even if I still spend 90% of the time writing code manually, I still am very glad for being able to get that initial boring part out of the way quickly, without wasting my mental effort cycles on it.